


5 Full Moons + 1 Waning Gibbous

by drneroisgod



Category: H.I.V.E. Series - Mark Walden
Genre: 5+1 Things, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gen, inspired by That Scene in aftershock, werewolf!Raven
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-21
Updated: 2021-01-21
Packaged: 2021-03-12 17:08:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,580
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28888860
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/drneroisgod/pseuds/drneroisgod
Summary: As it turned out, the church walls could neither bless her nor keep her...
Relationships: Natalya | Raven & Anastasia Furan, Natalya | Raven & Maximilian Nero, Natalya | Raven & Pietor Furan
Comments: 4
Kudos: 6





	5 Full Moons + 1 Waning Gibbous

**Author's Note:**

> "Midnight; and the clock strikes. It is Christmas Day, the werewolves' birthday, the door of the solstice stands wide open; let them all sink through.  
> "See! sweet and sound she sleeps in granny's bed, between the paws of the tender wolf." —Angela Carter, "The Company of Wolves"

i.

As it turned out, the church walls could neither bless her nor keep her. Once the sisters had recovered themselves, they ran into the yard to look for her. Two of them held their crucifixes before them like beacons; the third brandished a shotgun. 

The yard was empty. The broken fence groaned under its own weight. Beyond, there was only a strip of open space and then the first trees of the forest. They could hear themselves breathing. 

“Should we go after her?” asked the first nun. 

The second nun sneered. “Are you insane? That thing ripped the garden gate from its hinges!”

“Well, it is an old fence.”

“And that thing is _not_ a little girl,” her sister returned. “I don’t care what it looked like before.”

In front of them, the third nun scanned the edge of the forest over the back of her shotgun, praying all the while: “Turn not your face from us nor cast us away from your countenance. Look upon us with your fortifying gaze and strengthen us in our time of trial; teach us to rise against both the visible and invisible enemies.”

The first nun crossed herself, looking a little pale. “What do you think it was?”

“For all I know, it was the devil himself, and good riddance.”

The third nun fired a shot into the trees, eliciting a small shriek from both her companions. 

“I am unacquainted with the devil,” she said stolidly. “But I know what a wolf looks like, and what to do with them. You two go inside. I’ll take first watch.”

“God protect us,” whispered the second nun.

The first looked up to the bright full moon. “Amen.”

ii.

She was alone in the forest. She scavenged more than she hunted, prowling the forest looking for leftovers; when she was in town, she was much the same. Natalya: that was her city name. In the forest, she was nameless. She was fast and she was wild and she needed no name for she was alone. On good nights, she caught squirrels and birds to tide her over. She used to build fires, but then the people started looking for her. To some she was a monster, to some she was a meal. In either case, it wasn’t safe. She got used to eating things raw. Even when she had her fingers, she was too cold to make them pluck feathers. 

She was better at being a wolf than she was at being a girl. When the hunter’s moon splashed red light on the forest, she knew to run. She slaughtered a fawn, a tiny thing and so easy to break. She feasted until daylight, whereupon her girl-self discovered herself red and sticky and nauseous. She laid next to the bones until the danger passed. 

She told herself she didn’t mind the blood, but it made it so hard to go into town. She worried less about bullets and more about wrapping clean clothes in spruce boughs and twine someplace she might find them again. At night, she dreamed of bread and honey.

iii.

Eventually, she lamed herself in a trap. Pietor Furan stewed as they watched her struggle. “Bitch nearly took my hand off.” 

“She’s perfect,” his sister breathed.

They brought her to a glass prison and expected her to break. She had no room to run and no trees to mark as her own. Through the windows she could hear the moon calling her.

“Get him,” Furan snapped, setting her on one of her classmates. The boy did not have claws but he charged her bravely; she tossed him off her back as she rolled.

“Again!” Furan instructed. She ran at the boy, trying harder to knock him off his feet. “Bite him!”

She turned and howled in his face. 

“How dare you raise your voice to me,” he said, growling as though he were the wolf.

He knocked her down and looped a silver noose around her neck. Though she howled for the rest of the night and screamed for the next day, no one came to remove it. Almost no one. The second night, a raven pushed its head through her glass prison, wondering what the matter was.

“Help me,” she pleaded. “This silver noose is hurting me.”

The raven looked first at the noose and then at her. “I cannot cut your silver noose, but I know your jailer. Give me your innocence and I will blind him for you.”

“I have no use for it,” she agreed. “Blind him, and I may yet escape.”

And so she spat out her innocence and gave it to the raven, who let it sparkle on its breast while they waited for Furan to return. When he appeared, the raven circled, once, twice, three times, and then dove, plucking an eye straight from the socket.

Furan roared with pain and grabbed the bird from the air, wringing its neck in one motion. 

“So, you fancy yourself a raven?” he asked, kicking the small corpse to her paws. He did not cover his wound but stared at her with one bright eye and one dark eye beneath two eyebrows that met. “In time you will learn some respect, little raven, that much I can promise you.”

She regretted the deal she had made sorely, for, though Furan was only half-blind, she had paid all her innocence for it, and, on top of that, the bird was no good for eating—it had already been rotting on the inside. 

iv.

Snowlight, moonlight. She kept her head bowed before the sister, all silent, all still.

“My, what big teeth you have,” the sister chuckled, though that joke had gotten old long, long ago. “You have passed your final test, my dear. Do you feel ready?”

“I want nothing more.”

The sister’s eyes gleamed. “They say if you burn a werewolf’s clothes, they’ll never change back.”

This did not sound true, but, then again, she had always tried to take good care of her clothes. The sister knew many stories about wolves, about husbands and wives who disappeared in a canticle of howls and jilted women who turned the people who had wronged them. 

She knew better than to say anything. 

The sister collected herself soon enough. “This is your target. He murdered someone I loved very much, many years ago. He is an elusive and dangerous man and that is why his execution must be swift and merciless.”

She could not help it: she howled.

v.

“Silver bullets, men,” Colonel Francisco said. His well-ordered team stared back at him: they had not believed the rumors on principle. “Conventional weapons locker, now!”

“Belay that order, Colonel.” Dr. Nero’s eyes gleamed from the shadows. “She is not to be harmed.”

“Sir,” the colonel deferred. “I didn’t realize you intended to hold her. Are you certain this is the wisest course of action?”

“Why shouldn’t I be serious? She could be useful.”

“She could also tear out our throats in a fraction of a second,” Francisco said. “Let us take precautions. Even a muzzle—”

“Will be unnecessary,” Nero said coldly. “I do not intend to restrain her anymore than necessary. I believe she can be turned.”

“She already has, turned, sir,” Francisco said desperately. “That’s the problem.”

A thin, remote smile spread across Nero’s face. “Funny, colonel. I never took you for a coward.”

The silence that followed was broken by the sound of a wounded howl.

“It seems our guest is awake,” Nero said. “I must greet her.”

When she saw him, he was sharp teeth and dried blood. 

“My name is Dr. Nero,” he told her. “I’m hoping we’ll be friends.”

She lunged at him with the intent to take his neck in her jaws and break it. He flew out of the way, and, the next time she saw him, she was in irons and he had a book. She did listen, though she hated herself for it. Wolves do not know how to read.

v+i. 

She smelled Nero waiting for her, so she cracked some sticks beneath her shoes so he would know she was coming. She knew the forest better than she knew herself and so she was unafraid, but the same would not be true for Nero. 

“Natalya?” he called out. “Are you decent?”

She smiled. “No, but I’m dressed. I wasn’t expecting a ride home. News?”

Nero nodded grimly. “Number One is holding an emergency council meeting. Are you up for it?”

She grinned at him wolfishly. “Always.”

They walked through the woods to the clearing where their shroud awaited them. She looked back at the forest—in the end, she would always belong here, but it was not home.

“Second thoughts?” Nero asked.

“No,” she said. “But I had a jacket before I turned. Maybe I should go look for it.”

“You won’t really need a jacket in Cairo,” Nero sighed.

“Well, you know what they say,” she said. “If you burn a werewolf’s clothes they get trapped as wolves forever.”

“That’s just superstitious nonsense,” Nero said. “And it’s unlikely anyone who might find your jacket will think to burn it if they don’t know it’s yours.”

“I guess I’m just paranoid,” Raven admitted. She climbed into the shroud first. When she turned around to offer Nero a hand up, she found he was already behind her, inside.

“I know the feeling, my dear. I’m the same way with running water.”

**Author's Note:**

> Inspirations and Influences: Prokofiev's _Peter and the Wolf_ , "Turn" by The Wombats, "Running with the Wolves" by AURORA, "The Company of Wolves" by Angela Carter and the film of the same name, "St. Lucy's Home for Girls Raised by Wolves" by Karen Russell, and, of course, Red Riding Hood


End file.
